Clause 3
Business Rate Supplements Bill
12:15 pm
Bob Neill (Shadow Minister, Communities and Local Government; Bromley and Chislehurst, Conservative)
We now turn to definitions of the use of money raised by BRS. I tabled the amendment in a spirit of genuine enquiry and helpfulness.
One concern raised in the evidence sessions by a number of witnesses from the business community was the definition of economic development. It links to the concerns that are rightly set out in the consultation document that the Minister has provided about how the business community can be reassured that there is genuine additionality in the funding and, if business is to contribute, how it can be assured that the money is genuinely channelled towards economic benefits, rather than substituted for funding for other activities.
The clause starts by referring to
“expenditure...on the project to which the BRS relates”,
but subsection (3) defines what the money can be used for almost by exclusion. It says what BRS money cannot be spent on, but you will remember, Mr. Atkinson, that in the evidence sessions many business organisations said that they would like the Bill to contain a more comprehensive definition of what it could be spent on by way of economic development. The amendment endeavours to achieve that.
If the amendment were made, as well as saying that the BRS money may be spent only on the project to which the BRS relates and that the authority would otherwise not have incurred that expenditure—it is genuinely additional—the clause would state that the BRS money may be spent only in a way that promotes the economic well-being of the local authority’s area. We set out specific examples of such expenditure, which I suspect have been well rehearsed, both in the documentary evidence—the White Paper—and our evidence sessions. I do not think that anyone would argue against such areas of expenditure attracting the interest of authorities for a BRS scheme, but the amendment is intended to reassure businesses that there is a requirement to stick to a definition that is in the Bill, and that should for any reason there be a straying beyond that, they would have recourse through the usual provisions—judicial review and so on.
I am sure that local authorities would not stray, but the amendment is intended to help and to make the spirit of co-operation more effective, which I am sure is something that, after the controversy of the earlier debates, we all genuinely wish to see, having got thus far. That is the spirit in which I move the amendment, and I am interested to hear what the Minister says about how we can achieve that better definition, which seemed to be a genuine—not an obstructive—desire on the part of business.